The title derives from a poem by the Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik (1936–1972), whose poetry I set to music in «The Silence of the Lilacs Fluttering (2024)» for six voices. Pizarnik’s poetry often returns to the image of the garden, which she once evoked through a remark by the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard, who described it as something like “the memory-dream lost far beyond the true past.”

In “Someone in the garden is delaying the passing of time”, I draw on the metaphor of the garden — echoing Pizarnik’s poetry — as a space for memory, dream, imagination, and discovery, hoping this could be a starting point for listening. The opening section, with its high-pitched pizzicati in the violin supported by the piano’s subtle rhythmic deviations, runs through the work like a broken clock, and may be heard in relation to the element of time and memory. In contrast, the passages of sustained harmonies and more elaborate textures suggest the domains of imagination and discovery.

The piece was commissioned by Da Capo Chamber Players with support from The Norwegian Composers’ fund.